Just finished The Last Of Us and I don't remember us having a thread about it, so what do you lot reckon?

Personally, it's gone right into the all time favorites and I award it a rare fanfuckingtastic out of 10. Amazingly well written and decently lengthy. Even if the story did pinch bits from plenty of other films & games.

I really liked it. I thought it'd be an alright TPS with a decent story, but the gameplay was surprisingly good and the writing was excellent. One of my favourite story-centric games of the year (my overall GOTY is Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, and that has minimal story), and just so much fun to play. So much detail was put into the environments as well, so I'd explore to be able to see the interesting things instead of just exploring for items.

I do have a few issues with it though. The AI during stealth segments kept breaking my immersion - having to creep around Clickers while Ellie is shouting about there being enemies and knocking shit over like a bull in a china shop. Also when Henry saves Joel and Ellie from drowning in a raging river, even though black people can't swim very well in real life. Those big boss zombies weren't fun to fight at all, and I reckon they were unnecessary. The game peters out a bit about 2/3 of the way in, from the university campus onwards, with the snowy level being overly linear and not as interesting as previous levels like Pittsburgh (though the story in the snowy levels is good). I didn't like the very final level much at all, felt too much like a typical cover-based TPS while before that the game felt a lot more unique. Also the bit with Marlene's decision to kill Ellie felt a bit out of nowhere, and the ending itself was too abrupt though there will undoubtedly be a sequel.

>>17336Substantially less than in Leon. Leon is a movie about a completely inappropriate but ultimately platonic relationship forming between an emotionally stunted manchild and a damaged young girl who's older than her years. Matilda is in many ways more mature than Leon, that's one of the central conceits of the story, and the suggestive scenes in the movie play up the contradiction. The Last of Us, by comparison, has no sexual overtones in the relationship between Ellie and Joel - Joel first rejects Ellie because of what happened to his own daughter, but eventually Ellie becomes a surrogate daughter to him, leading to that "difficult" ending, in which he destroys what they've worked towards for his own emotionally selfish ends. Joel's relationship to Ellie is uniformly paternal and protective.

There's one line of incidental dialogue between enemy hunters, about how David keeps "pets" and that he's captured Ellie to that end. (Not coincidentally David is, in my opinion, the weakest character in the game, being both written and acted as a predictable, two-dimensional "slimy bad guy".) This stood out to me as the only sexually threatening line in the game, and Ellie eventually hacks David to bits with a machete, so I suspect any paedos looking for kicks would come away from The Last of Us somewhat disappointed. In fact I'd be pretty fucking suspicious of anyone who found "creepy nonce aspects and overtones" in that game - there really aren't any.

>>17337>Matilda is in many ways more mature than Leon
I'm not sure. Matilda acts like a child at every turn - she's petulant, she plays dress-up, she takes the piss out of the hotel manager, she tries to hang out with the other kids on the street. Leon has the reserved patience of an adult and gives her instructions like a guardian figure would. The actual difference between them is that Matilda has a zest for life, while Leon is an insular machine that does nothing but kill and sit in his chair.

>>17376>>17377>The additional material is found in the film's second act, and it depicts more of the interactions and relationship between Léon and Mathilda, as well as explicitly demonstrating how Mathilda accompanies Léon on several of his hits as "a full co-conspirator", to further her training as a contract killer.
What exactly does it contain? I would have thought if it there was explicit lewdness it would have been noted on wikipedia.

>>17392There is shit on the chair. The guy who posted it (to reddit I think) said that it was his wank chair and that he'd massage his prostate whilst having a tug, which is why there are skidmarks all over it.

>>17346>Leon has the reserved patience of an adult and gives her instructions like a guardian figure would
You mean, when he instructs her on how to be an assassin, like a guardian figure would? I can't read much adult thinking into that.

>The actual difference between them is that Matilda has a zest for life, while Leon is an insular machine that does nothing but kill and sit in his chair.
They're two broken people looking for some kind of meaningful human relationship, but finding it in the wrong place; Matilda has lived around violence and falls in love with a hitman, Leon is so socially and emotionally stunted that he eventually accepts the companionship of a child.

>>17410It's one of the very rare moments of player agency, but you dont even know theres a choice to be made. I walked in and popped everyone in the room then realised later I could have walked out without any killing.

>>17411You can't just walk out, not without killing the main doctor at least. The first time I stood there for ages waiting for the option to leave without hurting anyone, but eventually shot the doc in the foot (which killed him on the spot).

Just because you don't approve of the lesson or its message doesn't make it adult thinking. Our country teaches children the basics of killing and being a soldier every day with the cadets. That too is adult thinking.

And you've got to admit. The relationship worked out pretty well and benefitted them both.

Another ex-cadetlad here. My cadet troop took to me to the shooting range the very first time I attended, and a couple of weeks later we all went to Bisley to do more shooting, along with learning how to spy on enemies while under camouflage. Fun stuff, I would have stuck with it if my lazy arse weren't so irked by the fitness aspect of it.

>>18266It's a common criticism. It seems that some people have the expectation that all games should provide GTA/TES levels of freedom, whilst still retaining their plot coherence and moment-to-moment gameplay polish.

Seems a bit silly to me. TLoU was the best game I played last year, probably my favourite game of the generation. It would not have been any better if I could've ridden around entire cities on horseback doing mindless sandbox things instead of progressing the actual game.

Nothing necessarily, some games like Portal are incredibly linear but utterly brilliant. What I didn't like in TLoU is how it tried to give the illusion of being open when it simply wasn't.

In addition to what 17332 said about the AI in the game being unrealistic around enemies, some other grievances I had were;

Getting locked out of areas I hadn't fully explored yet because I happened to choose the wrong door/hole to go through. Very annoying when supplies were low and there was no way to then go back.

The 'restart encounter' option would do nothing to undo the above. Often it would restart the encounter at completely random points or at a different place/time, not very helpful when it puts you moments away from several enemies instead of the actual start.

The save and load feature was also screwy, sometimes it worked as you'd expect, other times it would just put you right back at the start of the encounter when you next played, losing all the progress made.

I saw reviews giving this game 96/100, I'd give it an 82.75

Also how hard would it have been to add in a few challenge style modes? Everything they needed was there.

The complete lack of choice in anything annoyed me, especially at the end of the story ... when the fuck is episode 2 of Telltale's latest Walking Dead coming out?

As soon as it started getting good reviews people were practically falling over each other to call it overrated, which I find strange. It wasn't ever intended to be a sandbox game, so I don't understand how these people managed to buy it unwittingly. It had derivative elements, but it made a fantastic job of drawing me in to the point where I wanted to do the NG+. Only 3 games on this generation of consoles, for me, can makes such a claim.

>>18269>What I didn't like in TLoU is how it tried to give the illusion of being open when it simply wasn't.
Could you expand on that? I don't remember feeling at any point that the game was trying to pretend to be something it wasn't.

>>18270>As soon as it started getting good reviews people were practically falling over each other to call it overrated, which I find strange.
See also: every popular game ever.

I just finished the DLC, the reviews weren't fucking around when they said it was short. It was uniformly excellent but left me hungry for more, and this is my only complaint really - it didn't fully scratch the itch, and it's probably going to be years until the next one.

>>18321Congratulations on somehow reading an insult into that. I said that not everything has to be a franchise. I did not say that nothing should ever have a sequel, and people who enjoy some sequels are brainwashed.

I'll watch it, but it'll probably just be yet another mediocre crossover. I've never enjoyed a screen adaptation of a videogame to date (with the exception of the original Mortal Kombat movie, and I'm fairly sure that's just nostalgia).

I read the comic miniseries for TLoU, didn't really do anything for me.

>>18342I don't think there's anything inherent about story-driven games that precludes enjoyable Hollywood movies being made out of them. I would settle for a shallow but entertaining Halo movie, for instance.

>I''ve never enjoyed a screen adaptation of a videogame to date
Resident Evil (the first one) is the only one, for me. I went to see the Prince of Persia film with my then-girlfriend and the best thing I could say about that film is that it didn't take itself too seriously.

The missus had only seen the first one until recently, so we watched them in a marathon and she got visibly more depressed and at the end of the latest one was pretty much scunnered. The woman who played Jill in the latest one was a fucking horrible actress, just terrible.

Are they going to tie up the story? The last one ended on a cliff hanger. I just want the pain to end.

I'd play it, I like the first one. It doesn't need to be revolutionary to be good, I like the Naughty Dog cover shooter style in the same way I like GTA; tried and tested formulas work. Add to them, refine them, prune the shit. Don't change them.

Second game confirmed. There's a trailer out, it shows who's in it but little else, if you're worried about spoilers.

Happens to coincide with me replaying the original on Grounded difficulty. I'm generally enjoying getting my arse handed to me, but the sparsity of checkpoints is a right bastard. I'm about halfway through and there's a couple of locations up ahead that I'm dreading.

>>22044I'm at the university and only realised a few levels ago that a brick, on its own, is a guaranteed kill for everything in the game if you use it right (except for bloaters, which go down with one properly-placed molotov). Wish I'd known that at the start.

Winter's going to be a cunt though. So far it's been the big areas that have been hard (hotel, library) because they were so huge and had so many enemies, but that enclosed fight with a horde + bloater in the old factory is going to be murder with limited resources.

>>22046Yeah it wasn't so bad. Having to do the whole of the hospital in one stretch was much more tricky.

I did the DLC afterwards (Grounded doesn't make much odds here, but it's still great), and then read the comics (eh... I've read worse). Now I'm really fired up for a game that's not going to be released for years.